Saturday, February 21, 2015

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on the "imperial" presidency of Barack Obama

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy gives us his weekly view from Capitol Hill. In his words:

"The old adage is that if you say something enough times, you might just start believing it. For President Obama, the opposite appears to be true when it comes to his authority to unilaterally change

immigration laws. Twenty-two times over the past several years the president said that he does not have the authority to change immigration law on his own. In November of last year, he ignored his own legal counsel and moved forward with an executive order that circumvented Congress.
"Congress rejects this imperial maneuver and will continue to fight against the eroding of government’s three coequal branches as envisioned by our Founders.
"And 2,000 miles away from Washington a federal judge in Texas agreed with us in Congress (and the president himself) and ruled that the president’s action violated the law."This is a significant development in our fight against this administration’s reshuffling of the powers held by the legislative and executive branch. But as Americans concerned with the sanctity of the Constitution review this decision, it only took a few days for the president to again stretch the limits of his power.
In a textbook 'Friday news dump' the Administration admitted more flaws in Obamacare and acted to blunt any political repercussions that it might cause. First, it was discovered that 800,000 Americans received the wrong the tax information from Obamacare and are advised to hold off on filing their taxes. In California, under the state exchange, up to 100,000 Californians received erroneous tax information. Filing taxes with our broken tax code is hard enough for hardworking families. Now an additional stress is added with this revelation.
"Second, the administration announced a special enrollment period for individuals without Obamacare (in the millions) so they won’t face the shock of the tax penalty. This is just the latest of the over two-dozen unilateral changes to the law made by the president.
"Time and again, this administration seems to be performing damage control from the pain of its policies and when faced with legitimate opposition they routinely resort to going at it alone rather than working with Congress.
"When President Bill Clinton faced a Republican Congress he conceded, 'the era of big government was over.' I have urged President Obama to work with the Congress on the issues facing Americans. Instead, he continues to ignore the will of the American people just last November. And in doing so, he walking himself further down a road that stretches the limits of his authority. House Republicans will not simply sit back and watch."